By Philip Freeman Everyone knows about St Patrick – the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland, defeated fierce druids in contests of magic and used the shamrock to explain the Christian Trinity to ...

Comparatively speaking, the fifth century CE is not an era from which there is much information outside the failing Roman Empire. In the British Isles, it is a mysterious time that conjures images of ...

It was, ironically, the druids of Ireland that brought an end to this bloody cult, murdering Tigernmas during a frenzied ceremony around the idol. Elsewhere in Europe, it does appear that the ...

Historians agree that St Patrick was born in 373 AD in one of two possible locations - Dumbarton in Scotland or on the west coast of Roman Britain ...

The ancient Irish were at least familiar with the notion of reincarnation, as Irish mythology shows. The Druids left us no written record of their religion or the belief system of our ancient ...

Hagiographies (writing on the lives of saints) give us a glimpse of the food culture of early medieval Ireland, when Patrick ...